Page 47 of Love Letters on Hazel Lane

Not big enough. No side rooms either.

I have one suggestion. But I don’t want to upset you again.

Tell me?

Local primary school?

Jo gulped. She hadn’t been inside a school since the day she’d left the comp and had vowed never to set foot in one again. (She hadn’t yet figured how she’d manage if she ever had children of her own. Dropping them off at the school gates in a morning and picking them up of an afternoon would be one thing, but venturing inside for parents’ evening or a nativity play? She’d need therapy to do that.)

She tapped out a reply to Gemma.

There must be somewhere else.

Yeah, there’s sure to be. Put your thinking cap on.

Jo spent the whole day wandering around Hebbleswick. She browsed the bookshelves in the hospice shop. She peered through the windows of the art gallery, with its landscapes of the local countryside, patchwork scenes of sheep fields and drystone walls. She marvelled at the many different types of lentils in the wholefood shop and wondered if anyone actually ate quinoa, but she couldn’t think of anywhere other than the school.

She had to put all her bad memories aside – the interminably long, lonely playtimes and the relentless teasing. She had to push the humiliation of being kicked out of the school choir for singing out of tune and always being the last to be chosen for the netball teams to the back of her mind. If she couldn’t do that, then Hebbleswick Scrabble Festival wouldn’t happen.

*

Jo’s old primary school was over forty miles away from Hebbleswick but the two buildings were strikingly similar. Dark-grey stone. Victorian architecture. High windows. A main entrance and two side entrances, one marked ‘boys’ and one marked ‘girls’.

Of course, much had changed since she was a child. Playgrounds that once were squares of tarmac surrounded by stone walls now accommodated football nets, basketball hoops, a climbing frame and benches.

Hebbleswick Primary even had a nature zone complete with pond, and vegetables were being cultivated in a small allotment area. Jo stood outside the gates, trying to pluck up courage to go in.

Schools might have changed, but she suspected that children could be as cruel now as they were back then. If your face didn’t fit, if you didn’t know quite what to say or how to join in a game…

Her legs felt weak, almost as if they might give way from under her. She hated the smell of schools: the lingering aroma of school dinner cabbage with overtones of unwashed children, sweaty socks and cleaning fluid.

And the sounds too: voices echoing down corridors, the sound of others enjoying themselves at playtimes whilst she cowered behind a tree, the taunts.

She wondered – not for the first time – if her life might have been different if she’d had a more positive experience at school. If she’d grown up with a little more confidence, maybe she wouldn’t have leapt at the first chance of love; maybe she wouldn’t have ended up with a man like Si.

She shuddered. Was she really going to do this, to step inside? It was tempting to walk away, but she wanted the festival to happen perhaps even more than Ras did. From the second she’d come up with the idea, it had brought such a strong sense of purpose to her life, something she hadn’t even realised had been missing. Besides which, she didn’t want to waste her free afternoon. David had been most surprised when she’d asked him; it was the first time in the many years Jo had worked at Pop! Productions that she’d asked for some time off without at least two months’ notice.

She pressed the shiny chrome button.

‘Jo Knox to see the head teacher,’ she said in her most confident voice.

If the head teacher agreed to her request, she’d be going inside this building rather a lot over the next few weeks. Did she really want to do this?

There was a buzzing noise for a few seconds. Jo pushed the black metal gates open and stepped inside. Taking a deep breath, she strode purposely up the path towards the sign saying Main Reception.

‘Good afternoon, Miss Knox,’ said a voice as she walked in. ‘Or is it Mrs?’

The reception area was bright and cheerful, a far cry from the austere hallway of her old school. But that didn’t stop the memories from flooding back.

Her surname had always been the butt of jokes. At first, it hadn’t been too bad: variations on knock knock jokes that simply weren’t funny. But later… she shuddered remembering how the teasing had started in earnest when she was the first in her year to need a bra. A vile bit of graffiti on the cloakroom wall. Seen the size of Knoxs knockers? it had read.

Jo had been upset not only by the personal remark about her body, but also by the missing apostrophe.

‘Are you all right, Miss Knox?’

She snapped back to reality. The receptionist, seated behind a curved modern desk, was staring at her. ‘Do you need a glass of water?’

‘No, thank you,’ Jo said. ‘Sorry. I’m fine.’